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Microcosm and the Virgilian Persona

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Microcosm and the Virgilian Persona Fiachra MAC GÓRÁIN MICROCOSM AND THE VIRGILIAN PERSONA I wish to approach the persona of Virgil from the perspective of microcosm, which I broadly define as a literary figure involving a comparison between something great and something small. I shall focus on three related microcosmic passages, one from each of the three works: a speech of Tityrus in the first Eclogue, a simile from the fourth Georgic, and the shield of Aeneas. Thus my discussion will offer something of relevance to the poet’s persona in and across the three works1. I begin with an overview of microcosm in Virgil before exploring the connection between microcosm and the poet’s persona. Virgil’s oeuvre is microcosmic in different ways. The late-antique Neoplatonist commentator Macrobius explicitly compared Virgil to the cosmos2. This comparison is a central reference point for scholarly appreciations of the universal and all-embracing qualities of Virgil’s poetry, especially the Georgics and the Aeneid3. Critics since the fourth-century commentators Aelius Donatus and Servius have noted both the intertextual imperialism of Virgil’s synthetic poetics and the way in which the three works taken together seem to encompass the entire trajectory of human civilization, from pastoralism through agriculturalism to urban polity. The three works also contain many instances of mise en abyme, which is microcosm of a second order. Lucien Dällenbach, author of the classic study on the subject defines mise en abyme as “any internal mirror that reflects the whole of a narrative by simple, repeated or ‘specious’ (or paradoxical) duplication”4. But the term is often applied more loosely, and in Virgil’s case it is useful to distinguish between intertextual and intratextual miniaturizations. The most obvious example of intertextual mise en abyme is the way in which the Aeneid incorporates a reworking of both Homeric poems. On a smaller scale Book Three of the Aeneid mirrors the embedded narrative of the wanderings of Odysseus5. It has also been argued that the sixth Eclogue is a miniaturization of Callimachus’ Aetia, that the murals on Dido’s temple to Juno present a synopsis of the entire archaic epic tradition, and that the parade of heroes and the shield of Aeneas recapitulate in different ways the Annales of Ennius6. Among the intratextual mises en abyme are the many summaries, proleptic or analeptic, partial or precise, of the works in which they are embedded7. Other passages and whole 1 Scholarly precedents for unitary readings of Virgil’s tripartite corpus include the following: F. Klingner, ‘Die Einheit des vergilischen Lebenswerkes’, Römische Geisteswelt, Munich, 1961, p. 274-9; C. Hardie, ‘The Georgics: A Transitional Poem’, Abingdon, 1971; E. Theodorakopoulos, ‘Closure: the Book of Virgil’, The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, ed. C. Martindale, Cambridge, p. 155-165; P. Hardie, Virgil, Oxford, [Greece and Rome New Surveys in the Classics No. 28], 1998, p. 1, and D. Nelis, ‘From didactic to epic: Georgics 2.458-3.48’, Latin Epic and Didactic Poetry, ed. M. Gale, Swansea, 2004, p. 73-107. 2 On the basis of both style and content; cf. Sat. 1.16.12 omnium disciplinarum peritus; Comm. Somn. Scip. 1.6.44 nullius disciplinae expers, and 1.15.12 disciplinarum omnium peritissimus. Cf. also Sat. 1.24.10-21, Sat. 5.1.7 and 5.1.18-20. 3 Cf. V. Pöschl, ‘Virgil als universaler Dichter’, Lebendige Vergangenheit. Abhandlungen und Aufsätze zur Römischen Literatur. Kleine Schriften III. Herausgegeben von Wolf-Lüder Liebermann, Heidelberg, 1995, p. 73-89, and P. R. Hardie, Virgil’s Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium, Oxford, 1986, p. 22-5, 33-50, and Ch. 7. 4 L. Dällenbach, The Mirror in the Text, Cambridge, 1989, p. 36, originally published as Le récit spectaculaire, Seuil, 1977. 5 Virgil metapoetically signals this repetition towards the end of the book. A Barchiesi, Journal of Roman Studies 86, 1996, p. 231 points to talia monstrabat relegens errata retrorsus | litora Achaemenides (3.690-1), where relegens errata might on a first reading be interpreted as ‘rereading the Wanderings.’ Cf. renarrabat (3.717). Cf. also D. Quint, Epic and Empire, Princeton, 1993. 6 Cf. J. J. Clauss, ‘Vergil's Sixth Eclogue: The Aetia in Rome’, Hellenistica Groningana VI: Callimachus, ed. M. A. Harder et al., Groningen, p. 71-93 on the sixth Eclogue, within which of course Silenus offers a digest of cosmological epic (31-40); for Dido’s murals cf. A. Barchiesi, ‘Rappresentazioni del dolore e interpretazione nell'Eneide’, Antike und Abendland 40, p. 109-24; for the parade of heroes cf. P. Hardie, The Epic Successors of Virgil, Cambridge, 1993; for the shield of Aeneas cf. P. Hardie, Cosmos, and A. Barchiesi, ‘Virgilian narrative: Ecphrasis’, The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, ed. C. Martindale, Cambridge, 1997, p. 271-81. 7 Some examples: lines 70-1 from the sphragis of the tenth Eclogue offer a characterization of the collection, haec sat erit, diuae, uestrum cecinisse poetam, | dum sedet et gracili fiscellam texit hibisco, as Servius recognized in his note on 71, allegoricos autem 1 books have been read as mirroring either the contours of the surrounding work, or some of its more important thematic thrusts8. Even the epic’s incipit, Arma uirumque is a microcosm both intra- and intertextual. Insofar as Arma uirumque is the poem’s title, Arma uirumque cano means both ‘I sing of arms and the man’ and also ‘I am singing the Aeneid.’ But the phrase also points to the poem’s status as a microcosm of both Homeric epics9. Microcosm offers a privileged locus for accessing the poet’s persona. First of all many of these microcosmic passages occur within the poet’s direct self-representations and are deeply implicated in his literary and generic self-positioning. Secondly, many others are focalized through an internal narrator or surrogate author, and in all of these cases there is either a clear echo of words in the poet’s voice or of some part of his work, or a miniaturizing allusion to one or more of his models. Surrogate authors are often considered refractions of the poet’s persona, just as internal audiences or viewers may be considered surrogate external readers. Fowler, Hardie and others have discussed analogies between acts of composition and reading within the poem, and our reaction to the poem as external readers. Fowler in particular has addressed the special connection between mise en abyme and authorial surrogacy10. The present opusculum situates itself within this scholarly tradition by considering three related microcosmic passages which are fundamental to an understanding of Virgil’s literary, generic and ideological negotiations. I would argue that Virgil’s microcosmic preoccupations can be traced back to the first Eclogue, to the second speech of Tityrus, who may be read as a surrogate author. The intermittent identification of Tityrus with the authorial voice goes back to Servius (Comm. Buc. 1.1 hoc loco Tityri sub persona Vergilium debemus accipere, non tamen ubique sed tantum ubi exigit ratio), and it has been a pervasive idea, though not universally accepted, in the history of criticism11. But of course the Eclogues are famous for their obfuscation of the authorial voice, and Tityrus is only one of many herdsmen who could be considered authorial surrogates. He responds as follows to Meliboeus’ enquiry about the identity of the god who has allowed him to keep his lands (19-25): significat se composuisse hunc libellum tenuissimo stilo. The first four lines of the Georgics programme the content of the four books; cf. Servius ad loc. Cf. R. A. B. Mynors, Virgil. Georgics, Oxford, 1990 and S. J. Harrison, ‘Laudes Italiae (Georgics 2.136-175): Virgil as a Caesarian Hesiod’, Patria diversis gentibus una? Unita politica e identita etniche nell’Italia antica, ed. G. Urso, Milan, 2008, p. 231-42, on Geo. 2.143-8 and on the Laudes Italiae (Geo. 2.136-76) and the sphragis at Geo. 4.559-60. Cf. the Sibyl’s prophecy of the war in Latium at Aen. 6.83-94, which finds echoes in the poet’s voice at 7.41-5. L. Bocciolini Palagi, La trottola di Dioniso, Bologna, 2007, p. 191 reads Venus’ words at Aen. 10.41, Allecto medias Italum bacchata per urbes, as a kind of a summary of Allecto’s three furious visitations in book 7. 8 Some examples: cf. D. Hershkowitz, ‘The Aeneid in Aeneid 3’, Vergilius, 37, 1991, p. 69-76 and D. Quint, Epic and Empire, on Aeneid 3; cf. G. K. Galinsky, ‘Aeneid V and the Aeneid’, American Journal of Philology, 89, 1968, p. 157-85; cf. D. Fowler, ‘Epic in the Middle of the Wood: Mise en Abyme in the Nisus and Euryalus Episode’, Intratextuality: Greek and Roman Textual Relations, ed. A. Sharrock and H. Morales, Oxford, 2000, p. 89-113; cf. P. Hardie, Cosmos, p. 53-66 and D. Nelis, Vergil's Aeneid and the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius, Leeds, 2001, p. 99-112 on the song of Iopas; cf. P. Hardie, Cosmos, p. 326 on Aen. 6.740-743; cf. G. K. Galinsky, ‘The Hercules-Cacus Episode in Aeneid VIII’, AJP, 87, 1966, p. 18- 51 and Ll. Morgan, ‘Assimilation and Civil War: Hercules and Cacus: Aeneid 8’, Vergil’s Aeneid: Augustan Epic and Political Context, ed. H. P. Stahl, Swansea, 1998, p. 175-98; cf. P. Hardie, Cosmos, p. 83-4 and Ll. Morgan, Patterns of Redemption in Virgil’s ‘Georgics’, Cambridge, 1999, p. 94-6 on the song of Clymene (Geo. 4.345-7). 9 On the titular force of a poem’s incipit cf. Servius, Comm. Aen. 1. Proem., veteres incipiebant carmen a titulo carminis sui; Ecl. 5.85-7, arma uirumque in Ov.
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